The Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer Toyota Motor Corporation (Japanese: ; Hepburn: Toyota Jidsha kabushikigaisha; IPA: [tojota]; English: /tot/) is commonly referred to as simply Toyota. Its headquarters are located in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was established on August 28, 1937, and Kiichiro Toyoda was its founder. With approximately 10 million vehicles manufactured annually, Toyota is the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.[ 1]

 Kiichiro Toyoda's father, Sakichi Toyoda, founded Toyota Industries, a machine manufacturer, as a spinoff. The Toyota Group, one of the world's largest conglomerates, now includes both businesses. The company produced its first product, the Type A engine, in 1934 while remaining a department of Toyota Industries. In 1936, it produced its first passenger car, the Toyota AA.

In the 1960s, Toyota took advantage of the rapidly growing Japanese economy to sell cars to a growing middle-class, leading to the development of the Toyota Corolla, which became the world's all-time best-selling automobile.  Toyota was able to grow into one of the largest automakers in the world, the largest company in Japan, and the ninth-largest company in the world by revenue as of December 2020 thanks in part to the booming economy's funding of an international expansion. When Toyota announced that it had produced its 200 millionth vehicle in 2012, it became the first automaker in history to produce more than 10 million vehicles annually. By September 2023, total production reached 300 million vehicles.[ 2]

 With the introduction of the first Toyota Prius in 1997, Toyota was praised for being a pioneer in the development and sales of hybrid electric vehicles that used less gas. More than 40 hybrid vehicle models are currently available for purchase worldwide by the company. More recently, the company has also been criticized for being slow to adopt all-electric vehicles, instead focusing on the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, like the Toyota Mirai, a technology that is much costlier and has fallen far behind electric batteries in terms of adoption.

 The Century, Daihatsu, Hino, Lexus, and Toyota brands will all be produced by the Toyota Motor Corporation by 2025. In addition, the business owns stakes in joint ventures that manufacture automobiles in China (FAW Toyota and GAC Toyota), the Czech Republic (TPCA), India (Toyota Kirloskar), and the United States (MTMUS), as well as stakes in joint ventures that manufacture automobiles in India (Toyota Kirloskar) and the United States (MTMUS). Toyota is listed on the London Stock Exchange, Nagoya Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange and on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where its stock is a component of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core30 indices.

 History

 Main article: History of Toyota

 1920s–1930s

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 The number of references to primary sources in this section is excessive. Please add secondary or tertiary sources to this section to make it better. "Toyota" can be found in news, newspapers, books, scholars, and JSTOR (December 2023). (Learn when and how to remove this message) The automated Toyoda loom, which is on display at the Toyota Museum in Aichi-gun, Japan, is a mass-produced item. Sakichi Toyoda came up with the Toyoda Model G Automatic loom in 1924. The Toyota Production System later incorporated the jidoka principle, which states that when a problem arises, the machine stops working on its own. Looms were built on a small production line.  The automatic loom patent was sold to the British company Platt Brothers in 1929, providing the initial funding for automobile development. 5][6]

 Toyoda Automatic Loom Works established an Automobile Division on September 1, 1933, under the direction of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder's son. On January 29, 1934, the company formally announced its intention to begin producing automobiles. 7][10] A prototype Toyota Type A engine was completed on September 25, 1934, with the company's first prototype sedan, the A1, completed the following May.  As Kiichiro had limited experience with automobile production, he initially focused on truck production; the company's first truck, the G1, was completed on August 25, 1935, and debuted on November 21 in Tokyo, becoming the company's first production model.[7][11][non-primary source needed] Modeled on a period Ford truck, the G1 sold for ¥2,900, ¥200 cheaper than the Ford truck.  In the end, 379 G1 trucks were produced.[ 11][12]

 The Model AA, Toyoda's first passenger car, was finished in April 1936. The retail price was 3,350 yen, $400 less than that of a Ford or GM vehicle. 13][14] The company's plant at Kariya was completed in May.  In July, the company filled its first export order, with four G1 trucks exported to northeastern China.[7][non-primary source needed] On September 19, 1936, the Japanese imperial government officially designated Toyota Automatic Loom Works as an automotive manufacturer.[7][non-primary source needed]

 The first vehicle manufactured by the company while it was still a department of Toyota Industries was the 1936 Toyota AA. Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda" (トヨダ), from the family name of the company's founder, Kiichirō Toyoda.  In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo.  The three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle, out of 27,000 entries, were chosen as the winning entry. However, Rizaburo Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end), and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are "clear").

 Toyoda, which literally translates to "fertile rice paddies," was given a new name to avoid being associated with traditional farming. The Toyota Motor Company Ltd. was founded on August 28, 1937, and the newly formed word was trademarked. 7][15][16][17] Kiichiro's brother-in-law Rizaburo Toyoda was appointed the firm's first president, with Kiichiro as vice-president.  On September 29[7][non-primary source required], Toyota Automatic Loom Works formally transferred automobile manufacturing to the new organization. The Japanese government supported the company by preventing foreign competitors Ford and General Motors from importing automobiles into Japan.[ 18]

 At the onset of World War II, Toyota almost exclusively produced standard-sized trucks for the Japanese Army, which paid one-fifth of the price in advance and the remainder in cash upon delivery.[ 19][20]

 1940s

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